Written by American author F. Scott Fitzgerald and first published in Collier's magazine on May 27, 1922, it was published in the book Tales of the Jazz Age. Fitzgerald was inspired by a comment by Mark Twain. Benjamin Button was born with a strange illness, which caused him to be born at the age of 80 and to become younger as the years went by. A condition that exists in reality under the name of progeria or Hutchinson-Gilford syndrome.